"He has no wallet. I checked."

I know it's more than 6 months old, but it may be one of the funniest scenes ever in a sitcom. I guess I'm posting it mainly for myself so that I can easily see it any time I want to.

If only I'd had the forethought to buy a less fuel-efficient car

My 1994 clunker got 19 mpg when it was new. According to cars.gov. That's 1 mpg too many. If you want to conserve gas, you should convert to gallons per mile (or gallons per 100 miles) and decrease that more-relevant number. Assuming they drive the same amount, trading in a car that gets 10 miles per gallon for one that gets 12.5 miles per gallon saves the same amount of gas as going from 20 mpg to 33.3 mpg or from 40 mpg to 200 mpg:

1/10mpg = .1 gallons per mile
1/12.5mpg = .08 gallons per mile
.1gpm - .08gpm = .02 gallon savings per mile

1/20mpg = .05 gallons per mile
1/33.3mpg = .03 gallons per mile
.05gpm - .03gpm = .02 gallon savings per mile

1/40mpg = .025 gallons per mile
1/200mpg = .005 gallons per mile
.025gpm - .005gpm = .02 gallon savings per mile

I think that in order to qualify for the "cash for clunkers" your new car should pass the following 3 criteria:

1) the new car gets at least 4 more mpg than the old one.
2) the new car gets at least 20 miles per gallon
3) the new car uses at least one fewer gallons per 100 miles

This graph illustrates these three criteria and their max, whicx is my proposal:

The "Old People Boom"

Am I the only one tired of saying "baby boomers"? They're not babies and should probably stop being defined by the post-war fuckfest that created them.

It's Called a "Cross WALK"

Not a "Cross DRIVE THE FUCK THROUGH".

Do you know how many people I've yelled that to? A lot.

12 Movies About Fatherhood and Career

Ordered by how illustrative they are of some aspect of the combination:

• 1 Speedo_POV
  
• 2 Resurrecting_the_Champ
  
• 3 The_Weather_Man
• 4 The_King_of_Kong
• The_Pursuit_of_Happyness
  
• 6 March_of_the_Penguins
• 7 Kramer_vs._Kramer
• 8 Parenthood
• 9 The_Wrestler
• 10 The_Shining
• 11 Deconstructing_Harry
• 12 Raising_Arizona
• 13 The Sopranos is not a movie
  

Science vs. Fiction

Fiction writing is very similar to science in one central way: You need to create a narrative that allows the facts to be exposed.

The Forgotten

Doug Glanville wrote an annoying article about how hard it is being a 38-year-old millionaire and here's what people (including I) had to say about it.

Space Taxi: Diary of a Long-Haul Tanker

At the bottom of the ocean, thermophilic bacteria have evolved to take nourishment from heat coming through cracks in the earth’s crust. Though similar in most respects to other bacteria, these thermophiles have the unique ability to harness this heat energy. Through natural selection, generation by generation, their species has adapted to take advantage of unseen power radiated from below the ocean floor. Organs that once digested physical nourishment have slowly mutated to perform this dual purpose.

If string theory is correct, space contains many more dimensions than the four that we can perceive. Imagine that some vastly intelligent being lives right next door to us along one of these unseen dimensions. Could he be sending information to us in some manner not easily measured by modern technology? He may even be looking forward along our “temporal” dimension and sending us clues.

Neuroscience is in its infancy. We’ve hardly even guessed at the function of vast portions human brain; much less the selective pressures and adaptations that carved it. Could we be evolving to better receive these signals? Even inchoate, such an ability would certainly confer a selective advantage. Could this vastly complex organ be only part thinking machine and part … antenna?

I doubt it, but my passengers are pretty fired-up about the idea. That’s why they’ve hired me to .. blah blah blah blah blah blah … etc.